Good on you Dave! I was just explaining to someone last night how Instagram is a Research Trawler. It collects data from “Likes” voluntarily given by the public, mashes it up with big data from other networks and sends it to ad agencies (for a fee) so they “know” where, when, what, how much and how often you buy a specific product. From this they number crunch to calculate how many items they need to produce to sell all manufactured products in stock, therefore minimising excess stock and maximising profit. However, they forgot one small point. They think it is a creative tool. It’s not. It’s just a sophisticated calculator. If you keep selling to the same people, they eventually get older and die, and your market dies with it. If industries want to grow and prosper, they need to enter new markets and attract new target audiences to cover for the ones they will lose over time. In order to do this they need to have ground-breaking ideas, but accountants don’t have ground breaking ideas. That’s why they are accountants. They consolidate profit and loss and displace the workforce to maximise profit, and in the course of doing all this they destroy future generations of creatives. I contacted a friend a few years ago and asked him “How’s life in Adland now?” His reply “Diabolical Kev, I just do it for the money.” I remember John Hegarty once saying “We need people who are passionate about advertising” I know all the people who write on this website are passionate about it. As Jeremy Sinclair said in his first ad for Saatchi & Saatchi “There has to be a better way.” What I find frustrating is I know the better way and so do you all, but nobody in the industry wants to know. Ignorance is bliss? I don’t think so. Ignorance is ignorance. There will come a point where the machine will grind to a halt. We are seeing this now. It is a direct result of manufacturers trying to control everything super-tightly on budgets because businesses are held to ransom to deliver shareholder returns. If they do not deliver those shareholder returns they get massive stock market repercussions. Remember when Tesco’s accountants calmly announced a few million had gone missing on the books? They lost almost half their share value in a week. Financial Markets don’t understand creativity. They call Creativity an Intangible asset because they don’t understand how it works. They only look for the result.

Creative Directors used to command respect because of the work they’d done themselves. There is nothing to respect now, except for how much they’ve polished and manicured their social media persona. Anyone can call themselves a CD, ECD, CCO these days. It’s all PR fakery by voracious self-publicists. Constantly claiming credit for work they had no input on. Creatives, when’s the last time you talked to your ‘Chief Creative Officer’ about your creative work? Or your ECD?

It could be that agencies are becoming places where creatives are bullied and not completely valued by other departments, with accounts opening their mouths for no reason whatsoever. We’ve all been there, after all.

Or, it could also be that other departments are taking the time to study creativity, while many CD’s still live by the taliban mantra “my creative penis is long enough, who needs *insert name of the department* “, which makes them uninterested about other departments’ outputs, therefore unfit to judge it.

Or, it could be that, after all, there isn’t a John Hegarty waiting to express himself inside every other CD: not many have the ability to sell creativity for its power, rather than for its risks (coincidentally that could also be the reason why more and more are so desperate that they come with the otherwise silly idea of a planner to help and sell creativity all the time).

The Creative Director doesn’t come with an academic alphabet soup after his name. His qualification is THE WORK.

That’s why the onus is on him to accurately evaluate the efficacy of the Agency’s “work” before it goes out the front door. It is also why he can spot unrealistic bombast of Account Directors, Planners and Heads of Media in THIER strategies. He is the Ad Agency’s intellectual focal point.

Unfortunately, these days, most of the besuited-ones around the conference table find it “safer” to go by colourful infographics in powerpoint slides than the insights and inituitions of a lone-wolf Creative Director.

The bean-counters and their yes-boys have taken over Ad Agencies like some putrid infection. The results are obvious.

The problem with studying creativity is that a good creative solution is perfectly obvious after the fact.

You can study good creative for years and come to the wrong conclusions, especially if you can’t do it yourself. In fact, I’d say that sentence represents the reality for a great number of people in the business.

As Bob Hoffman (boy is he quoted a lot here!)says, “Creatives make the ads. Everybody else makes the arrangements.” We, the creatives, make the products that our agencies sell. Without the ads we create, there are no ad agencies.

Yet we have become marginalised. A barely necessary and far too messy evil that should ideally be replaced by a nice neat piece of software.

How on earth did we get here?

We can blame the soulless bean counters, the be-bearded planners and the boot licking account service teams for ruining the creative process. But we the creatives allowed this to happen.

WE took our eyes off the ball. WE allowed ourselves to be manipulated by an economically meaningless awards system. WE accepted empty, pointless titles like ‘executive creative director’ and ‘chief creative officer’. WE stopped meeting and presenting to the people who pay for our work. WE looked only other creatives for approval of our work instead of our target audiences. And WE chose to ignore the BUSINESS aspects of the advertising business: WE didn’t want to be bothered by the sordid topics of money and whether that precious creative jewel of an account made our agency any money or not. WE let others pat us on the head and tell us not to worry about boring things like actually making a profit and justifying ourselves financially.

As consultant to some of the most profitable agencies in the business there is another side to this coin that many miss. If you look at where agencies lose money and then devise a system that turns this around, you’ll discover that involving the entire team in the process can make a huge difference. And the CDs quickly took this on board; it was never became a question of authority but getting the job done more effectively and bathing in the light of success (with the teams).

I have recently anointed my sixteen-year old son a creative director. He has never made any creative work nor had any brand-focussed ideas of any substance. He does, however, spend countless hours on YouTube and knows his way backwards around SnapChat. He is, therefore, perfectly well qualified by modern standards. And therein lies much of the problem.

If I had a pound for the amount of times a Creative Director approves work, only for Planners or Account Managers to say “they have one concern” and it’s back to the drawing board, I’d be retired, living on an island, sipping a Pina Colada.

And if a CD stands strong and says the work they approved answers the brief, the brief miraculously gets rewritten.

Its a very astute observation and you have alot of merit in your point.

My only comment is that it requires a very mature, business savvy and non creative egoist ECD for them to have absolute control. In my experience, many creatives are too ‘creative’ rooted’ as opposed to ‘solving clients problems’. Hence, they propose ‘creative for creative’s sake’ type of work that is simply in chase of awards as opposed to pragmatic solutions to client business problems.

My own perfect solution is a duopoly between planner and creative. The brief is jointly written with planner having veto, and the creative is jointly created with creative having veto. Other departments in the agency may be used to generate ideas and stimulus but they should sit outside the creative decision making process.

I’ve never ever written a creative brief until everything from client, accounts, planning, media, traffic and every and any other department has been either agreed in principle or signed off on route, presentation plan and budget because I would never want to waste a creative’s time in any of my departments leading them up the garden path. Each department was responsible for their own work. Not the work of others. We had no time for interfering busybody That is the way I was taught and that’s the way that worked, so that’s the way we used. If a creative brief was not available, or some of the information was not available, those who did not deliver knew where the responsibility would lie if there were any problems. Questions would be asked and lies and excuses were not acceptable…and guess what…everyone had a good time because they respected each other’s professional specialisation. That’s how you get the best. If at the end of the day, after all that, if we had any doubts in the pitch test run, we would tear it all up and start again:- and I HAVE done that. There are no excuses.

I don’t know of any CD’s who will let work be presented to Anyone outside the Creative Department before s/he has blessed the work. If it’s happening, the CD is completely to blame for being lazy.

I’m also not saying it doesn’t happen but the point of getting everyone together isn’t so they can critique each concept as much as it is to discuss how these concepts might play out in different on and offline media. The intent is to identify and seize opportunities. The work may, very well, have to be refined but it will serve the client and make the agency look better.

The issue is that Creative Directors too often grew up creating offline only and don’t pay much attention – still? – to what’s happening in the digital space. When their teams are creating TV are they also thinking how this idea should play out on Facebook, LinkedIn or Snapchat? Are there experiential opportunities with one campaign that don’t exist with another and should that be considered when deciding which campaign will be the agency recommendation?

If the answer isn’t yes then you have your answer as to why the group grope exists in the first place.

Great minds do not think alike. That’s what makes them great, creative, ingenious and inventive.
Many ECD or COO are hired because of their ability to coalesce a team of disparate groups of people. If you spend your entire life creating wouldn’t you be considerably better at it than the planner, the media buyer and the account person who has never made anything in their lives? Take Malcolm Gladwell’s advice, do something TEN THOUSAND Times and you’ll know how to do it better than anyone else. Think Tom Brady!!! Cheers!!!

Advertising has changed. As Bill Ferguson points out, offline media is now a major part of any campaign and considerations do need to be taken for how an idea should pan out in this media. However, I was doing exactly this 10 years ago in Saudi Arabia of all places. Paul Arden used to say:- ‘Anyone can have an idea, the cleaner can have an idea, it’s just that creatives have more ideas more often than cleaners’. In Dave’s last post I noticed two corporate campaigns have been posted that are similarly unrecognisably different. They may have been great ads 20 or 30 years ago, but today they are just “nice films”. They are not Advertising, they are Advertising dreamworlds. Ads for advertising people advertising themselves not the brand. I took a toe-in the water survey to see what an impartial banker thought about the ads. What this little bit of research tells me is this. The advertising industry is becoming dangerously and increasingly distant from its consumers to the point that the general public have no or little idea as to what the ads are about. It’s a bit like someone walking down the street wearing an unusual item of clothing expecting everyone to say: “HEY! I GOT YOU!” So if you’re lost for ideas for your next corporate campaign, may I suggest you look at this page:-http://www.ebay.co.uk/bhp/christmas-head-boppers

“An idea can turn to dust or magic, depending on the talent that rubs against it.” — Bill Bernbach

Best keep the ideas away from the ‘dusty’ departments, where they can be contaminated, and keep them where the ‘magic’ can be applied.
As the likes of Paul Delaney, Alan Midgely and John Bacon would say — “Mitch, we need you to sprinkle this with some of your Fairy Dust to make it shine.”

I left my last place (voluntarily) because of this culture. Also the freelance work I was doing at the weekend was more interesting.

I was briefed by an agency recently to come up with a ‘big idea’ (sic) over the weekend. I came in on Monday morning and presented it to the middleweight account handler. There was a lot of “hummmm” and “emmdon’tknow” so the account person went and got a second opinion and the response was similar.

After presenting the work for the third time to this ever-growing committee, I thought the work was about to suffer the death of a thousand cuts.

Then the Account Director came over. I presented the idea again. The A.D. stared hard for four seconds then spoke.

Dave, you have 840 “Likes” to this post as I write.
I would estimate the UK creative industry (hopefully) has about 20,000
creative people left working for it in some capacity or other in the UK.
Let’s say 10% of your likes come from overseas.

That still leaves 90% or 18,000 people from the UK,
out of those 18,000 people -756 people agree with you.
That means 17,244 people didn’t vote for you but
all you needed was 689 people to vote for you to
fulfil 100% approval from a 4% who produce great creative
work, but you did not. You got 5%.
That’s 20% more approval from creatives than those who have
delivered great work that works, and that, I’m very happy to say
tells me more and more people are listening to you.

If only 4% of all advertising is effective,
that means, out of the 18,000 people in the UK industry,
almost the entire 4% who understand, like, produce,
or intend to produce great advertising either now or
in the future have voted for you, so, Congratulations.

When I see something like this I ask myself
“What triggered such a massive response this time?”
and I think it has to be those words in your blog…

‘That’s very nice of him.’
and the bit about the Head of Traffic.

But I couldn’t possibly comment because I’m not a planner,
I’m a creative.

I was a Creative Director once, before I went freelance. The agency treated the creative dept as the shop floor where account handlers would come in a say “Can I have one of those please”. COO just didn’t get the creative process and the value the creative product. The agency no longer exists.

Wonderful analysis. “Has this cabinet approach (“gang bang advertising” as David Abbott called it) resulted in more exciting work? I think the rise of ad-blocking is your answer. The job of this committee approach isn’t to produce better work. It’s to make everyone feel involved.” I couldn’t have said it better myself – so i didn’t. It is why I started my own creative service 20 years ago. It’s my self-created job to be the sole Creative Director. Does it put the burden of proof on the results I get for my clients? You bet it does. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

In agencies, strategy, branding and planning staff rely on the language of science to justify their input. If their work is indeed scientific, many of their functions could theoretically be replaced by a 99-pence app that will be available to all agencies. In the next big economic downturn, I predict that only those staffers whose contribution is spontaneous, unique and effective will have value above 99 p. (Not all creatives will be safe either.)

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, US agencies were flooded with English people introducing a new line item in the budget: Planning. Since the time of the Royal Nonesuch in Huckleberry Finn, Americans have been in awe of English accents and afraid to challenge anything uttered in even the most unfortunate English accent–especially if the speaker was an abusive dickhead. Such is the nature of genius, we told ourselves. In time, competing line items (Brand, Strategy etc.) joined the competition for the limelight, and slices of the budget pie previously enjoyed by creatives had to be shared with the voracious newcomers. Once the new arrangement was accepted in American businesses, it was copied around the world.

This is a global problem. It is death by jury now. Some really valud points have come out of this article. The problem is, have you considered that maybe the ad industry is collapsing under the weight of fear and confusion. Fear of not getting sales and confusion, because my target market is all over the place. Advertising agencies as we know it are dying. There is no stopping it. Advertising agencies are businesses after all. And they are luxuries clients are not prepared to pay for anymore. That would explain the ‘all hands on deck’ mentality. That’s what you do when the ship is sinking, right?